HOW VATICAN II TURNED THE CHURCH TOWARD THE WORLD

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In general, the council indicates a new attitude toward a complex, pluralistic world. At its birth, the church was a beacon of moral light that stood apart from the Roman society in which it flourished. For more than 1,000 years after Constantine, it was a power within society, acquiring some of the pride, intolerance and triumphal spirit that is part of power's corruption. At the Reformation and after, the church reacted badly to the loss of its claim to be God's only spokesman and clung to its shrunken patrimony of power in ways that justified the exasperation of those who stood outside it.

Vatican II has made it clear that the church is ready to abandon "triumphalism," to erase the nonessential traditions that have often kept it from being credible as a moral force in the world at large. Without denying its own belief that it has a special divine mission, Catholicism now acknowledges that it is but one of many spiritual voices with something to tell perplexed modern man. When medieval Popes spoke to Kings and Princes, they listened and obeyed —or ran the risk of excommunication and exile from society. The words of Paul VI and his bishops to Presidents and Premiers bear no such threat; but neither did those of the Apostles to Roman procurators. Thus the more the church returns in spirit to the unfettered simplicity of the Gospel from which it sprang, the more likely it is that its voice will be heeded again by the world.